Centre plans to fortify citizen feedback mechanism

Experts ‘studying engagement through social media analytics’ to be hired.

A top official in the government said the changes were aimed at deciding a strategy to "win over youth, mainly those born after 1992, and understand what they want from the government".

NEW DELHI: Six months before Lok Sabha elections, the Centre is looking to strengthen its "citizen feedback" mechanism, and wants to hire agencies and digital experts who specialise in "studying engagement through social media analytics".

A request for proposal floated by the I&B ministry, through Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a public sector undertaking (PSU) under the ministry this week, said the main task of the selected company will be to provide communication insights to the I&B ministry on "how to improve government’s communication and to create citizen engaging content for various media and social media campaigns". The selection process is expected to start this month end when the bidding process will begin.

The bidding companies have been asked to present their expertise on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google Analytics integration, making PDF reports, understanding of "social media sentiment" with respect to news developments, make videos and graphics about government programmes and post them in relevant platforms and operate a live dash board which can track the social media activities of all ministries and departments from one place.

For this, the ministry would also be hiring a team of over 40 dedicated social media professionals, trained in digital campaigns and 'sentiment assessment,' who during the course of the next few months will gather social media feedback, strengthen "citizen feedback" mechanism and more importantly, inform the I&B ministry on how people are reacting on social media to various campaigns run by the government.

The selected company would also put in place a software set-up that, accordingly to the proposal, will "have capabilities to understand citizen views expressed publicly in print, television, online and social media platforms, provide comprehensive feedback reporting system to understand various aspects of traditional and social media communication, and help formulate strategies for betterment of the integrated communication".

A top official in the government said the changes were aimed at deciding a strategy to "win over youth, mainly those born after 1992, and understand what they want from the government".

"The recent results have thrown a mixed picture and it is getting difficult for many at the top to understand what the youth, which forms a considerable chunk of enthusiastic voters, wants. These tools will also help the government understand the expectations and mood of particularly those in the age group of 18 to 40," said the official.

"It will be a two-way process -- to tell people what the government is doing for them, and tell the government what the people are interested in. The idea is to have videos and content in as many regional languages as possible and disseminate them," said another official.

In July this year, the Supreme Court had issued a notice to the Centre over its decision to establish a social media communication hub under the ministry for monitoring activities on social media, forcing it to withdraw the proposal. But this time, officials in the ministry said they have taken care to remove the controversial bits of any hint of any kind of "surveillance and snooping" that were present in its July proposal.

Privacy experts that ET spoke with regarding the ministry's proposal said while most of the controversial parts have been removed, there were still concerns on "what the data would be used for, who all would control it and how will it be stored or used".

Advocate Raman Chima, Asia Policy Director, Access Now said, "There is no clarity in the RFP on what happens if the data gets misused by officials or by vendors. There is no mention of conflict of interest of the potential vendors or who their clients are. That is why it remains problematic. And the RFP aside, the government could have held a consultation in these matters as it concerns people's data. The larger concern is that, with all this being done at government expenses, won't every administration adopt such measures which will clearly favour them over the others, particularly when the elections are in a few months?"

Since 2014, the Modi government has effectively used social media to reach out to the people, with the PM himself pushing ministers to adopt social media platforms as part of their jobs. ET has learnt that the I&B ministry had also approached analytics software companies such as Topwalker and Meltwater to understand how to improve its feedback mechanism, before releasing this RFP.